Can Your Story Be Told In De Niro's Six Second Vine Time?

This weekend prompted several scribes to praise the impact of Vine. Celebrating its first birthday, the app is all about creating six second videos.

Its success spirals ever upwards. Bought by Twitter before it even launched, it already has 40m users, hot on the heels of the 150m on Instagram.

I liked the founder’s remarks that they tried several limits. Including 10 and 5 seconds. Yet 6 evidently just felt right.

And how can you ignore the fact that acting royalty Robert De Niro seems a fan of the concept.

Even though he’d not actually used the service, his quote (when asked by the Wall Street Journal if he’d taken video on his phone as his TriBeCa film festival was running a Vine competition) has been lapped up by the developers;

No, I haven’t done that but it’s an interesting thing. Six seconds of beginning, middle and end. I was just trying to time on my iPhone six seconds just to get a sense of what that is. It can actually be a long time. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand, five one-thousand, six one-thousand – you can tell a whole story in six seconds.

Who needs 140 characters, hey, when a 6-sec flick will do?!

They may well be onto something we can adapt for our solution selling ends.

Marketeers and ad creatives are on the case. Swift searching shows such Vine videos abound with punch.

Have you got one simple, killer message you can get across that can be captured in six seconds?

It brings interesting discipline.

Not least of which is can you deliver this punch verbally? In just six seconds…

Somewhere within what you sell there is a story. There are people with a story. There are problems that are solved in the real world.

Even if you’re short of ideas, my mind can’t help but think about having, say, four slides spell out a message.

One after another, just a couple of words, numbers or an image on each. A beginning, middle and end. One and a quarter seconds screen time a piece. Simply stitched together for a Vine of your own.

It could prove a terrific pre-meeting discussion prompt, meeting summary tool or post-meeting reminder. Truly securing your strengths and setting you apart.